The
generation gap is really a battle between whether it's worse to realize you're
getting older or to actually get older, or so argues Neighbors,
a very funny, especially crude, and surprisingly insightful comedy. On one side is a couple in their 30s who has just had a
baby. They keep telling themselves that their days of youthful exuberance and
excess aren't finished, despite all evidence to the contrary. On the other is a fraternity from the local college that has just moved
into the house next door and whose members are smack in the middle of those
lively days. At least one of them
will do pretty much anything to avoid the fact that he will soon only have these
carefree times as a memory.

The
conflict between the two groups is simple: The frat boys want to party and
loudly; the parents want their baby to sleep. Of course, the baby sleeps just fine on the night of the frat's arrival
when the parents head next door to drink, dance, and do hallucinogenic mushrooms
(They keep the baby monitor with them; after all, they're not completely
irresponsible). It's almost as if
the parents' investment in what the fraternity is doing has little to do with
what they say it does.

Mac
(Seth Rogen) and Kelly Radner (Rose Byrne) admit as much right up front. After seeing their new neighbors move into the house, they have to come
up with a strategy for how they're going to approach the new neighbors with the
request to "keep it down." The
request itself becomes secondary to how they plan to present themselves. They can't be the hardnosed, killjoy old people with no sense of
fun. They have to come across as the cool neighbors—the kind of people that
maybe the members of the frat will want to be one day. Maybe the fraternity brothers could even get a glimpse of that kind of
life, if only they were—maybe—to invite them over for a party one night.

They
never really ask this outright, but we can sense the longing for at least one
night of consequence-free frivolity just under the surface of their talk with
Teddy (Zac Efron), the fraternity's president, and Pete (Dave Franco), Teddy's
right-hand man and best friend. Mac
and Kelly have already had one night out ruined after they decided to take the
baby along to a club, only to pass out in the front hallway while trying to pack
up everything their daughter might need—including, for a reason that probably
only first-time parents would consider, her swing.

The
couple is completely unprepared for how charming the fraternity brothers are,
but they obviously have their own agenda: They have to keep their neighbors from
calling the cops, lest they end up on probation, which would prevent them from
being able to hold a big end-of-year party. That party is vital to Teddy, who stares longingly at the wall of
photographs documenting the organization's questionable history (They created
such sacred traditions as they toga party—when a production of Julius
Caesar turned rowdy—and beer pong as well as one of less-important note:
vomiting into a boot) and wants his own photo to be included.

They're
all yearning for something they don't have. Mac and Kelly have lost it with time and the added responsibility of
parenting. Teddy has yet to achieve
it and is uncertain if he'll be able to. It
all comes to a head when Mac and Kelly call the cops the night following their
adventure at the house (Hannibal Buress is quite funny deadpanning his way
through his two scenes as the officer on duty when the noise complaints are
made). After that, it's war, as each
party tries to get the other to move out of their home.

The
screenplay Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien doesn't quite understand the
concept of escalation, and the pranks each group perpetrates on the other come
to a climax fairly quickly. There's
a montage of the frat boys making life hell for Mac and Kelly (throwing trash on
their yard, catching them in the middle of being "spontaneously"
amorous, and their baby finding a condom on the yard, leading to a punch line of
a doctor with the worst bedside manner imaginable), and eventually, Mac and
Kelly try to get the guys booted by flooding the house. How they earn the money for repairs shows how vulgarly creative they can
be.

It's
the unexpected dynamic between the groups that leaves the biggest impression. The frat boys' pranks are rather ingenious, such as when they steal the
airbags from the Radners' car and set them up as booby traps for Mac. Then there are Mac and Kelly, whose claims of trying to be responsible
belie just how crazed for revenge they quickly become. Whatever pent-up frustration from the lack of freedom and
self-gratification they might have in their new roles as parents is aimed at
their sworn enemies. They rant and
rave, fantasizing about how miserable they're going to make these kids.

Rogen
and Byrne are quite good at capturing the manic turn of the characters, and
Byrne is especially funny in how devious her character can be, particularly in
one scene where she tries to get Pete and Teddy's girlfriend (Halston Sage)
together by seducing them both (It's odd that Cohen and O'Brien follow that
scene of empowerment with one that degrades Kelly). Efron is also consistently amusing as a guy who only understands one way
of life.

The
film's structure may be piecemeal (The big gags often come out of left field with
little setup), but the desperate absurdity and absurd desperation of these
characters carry it. This attention
to their anxiety about their place in life means Neighbors
is just as funny—possibly even funnier—in its less outrageous moments as it
is in the showboating gags.